


shaking (waiting to be done breaking)

by AlexiaBlackbriar13



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: (spoilers for S6 so far), Angst, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hallucinations, I mean they did sort of abandon Oliver and blame him for everything that wasn't his fault at all, Not particularly kind to Diggle or NTA, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, family support, post 6x18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 04:12:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14370648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexiaBlackbriar13/pseuds/AlexiaBlackbriar13
Summary: Oliver never expected Diggle, Rene, Dinah and Curtis to be waiting for him down in the bunker.He also never expected them to witness Felicity and William attempting to calm him down from the panic attack they triggered.





	shaking (waiting to be done breaking)

**Author's Note:**

> ari gets a shout out in this
> 
> you'll know it when you read it
> 
>  
> 
> i'll stop writing 6x18 related fics some day. hope you enjoy!

Diggle, Rene, Dinah and Curtis were waiting down in the bunker when Oliver arrived that evening to prepare for his usual patrol. He, Felicity and William had just enjoyed a nice family dinner at home; he and his wife had agreed that Will was finally allowed to sit next to Felicity on comms as a reward for getting an A in his recent history test, and they’d all headed over together. The only reason Oliver was coming down in the elevator by himself was that Felicity had received a phone call upon arriving and William had stayed up top with her.

“Hi, Oliver,” Diggle said, his voice flat.

The archer pointedly ignored him. He walked straight past the four ex-members of Team Arrow and hopped up onto the computer platform, checking the monitors.

He wasn’t trying to be rude. He just knew that they weren’t real. Ever since he’d been dosed with Vertigo, Oliver had been suffering infrequent but alarming hallucinations. Despite the drug being cleared from his system, he was still seeing things. It had become a normal part of life for the last couple of weeks. Felicity and William both knew and were supporting him as much as possible. Last week, he’d started getting psychological help in order to understand his mental health problems. One of the things his therapist had told him was to ignore the more upsetting hallucinations. If Oliver accepted their presence, but didn’t acknowledge them directly, they would most probably fade away.

Sliding into Felicity’s chair, he was checking the CCTV cameras near the precinct for any traces of Diaz when he heard Curtis ask confusedly, “Is he ignoring us?” 

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Dinah said.

“Hey. Hey, Hoss.” Rene snapped his fingers. Oliver didn’t respond. They would go away soon. They had to. His chest was already beginning to tighten with panic and he _needed_ these hallucinations to stop. “Yeah, he’s definitely ignoring us.”

“I am ignoring you,” Oliver said calmly, “Because you are not real.”

There was a beat and then Diggle questioned quietly, “What?”

Oliver continued to type on one of his wife’s keyboards, not breaking his gaze away from the screen. “This is all a figment of my overactive and traumatized mind. I have PTSD and depression and I’m hallucinating because of that. There is no logical explanation for any of you to be here. You left because that’s what everybody does. I’m broken, but you all realized that and you got out before I could hurt any of you anymore. You’re not here and none of you are real.”

“Yes, we are,” Diggle sounded annoyed now. The archer cringed into himself, anticipating getting shouted at. The Diggles in all his other hallucinations always yelled at him when they got angry. “Felicity invited us. Said she wanted us all to talk.”

“I don’t believe you and I don’t have to, because you’re not real.”

“Your wife reached out to try and fix this shitstorm between us all so we can finally catch Diaz and win our city back - and you’re just going to ignore us?” Diggle snapped, lunging up the steps of the platform to tower over the archer. 

“You’re not real.”

“Yes, we are!”

“No, you’re not.”

“ _DAMMIT, OLIVER!_ ”

The archer flinched when he felt himself being violently yanked out of his chair by his collar, Diggle’s massive hand clenched in the front of his shirt. Purposely keeping his eyes averted downwards, Oliver fought past the urge to pant and his sudden onslaught of dizziness to chant silently to himself that _this wasn’t real, he was hallucinating, they weren’t real and they couldn’t hurt him_. His brother in all but blood swore furiously and let go of him, sending Oliver sprawling onto the glass platform. He closed his eyes and curled up to protect his head from further harm with a hitched breath.

“What the hell is going on here?!”

Felicity. His saving grace. His light in the darkness. Oliver couldn’t help but release a relieved sob, one that he could tell shocked his hallucinations by their sharp inhalations. William came running up the stairs and fell to his knees in front of his dad. Oliver smiled weakly at his son as William helped him sit up, a worried expression on his face.

“Your husband’s being an asshole, that’s what’s going on,” Dinah sneered at her.

“Really!? Because to me, it looks like John just physically threw him onto the floor!”

Diggle appeared suitably chastised. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Oliver stiffened. Felicity had _responded to Dinah_. She’d heard the other woman speak. She’d even acknowledged Diggle’s presence. He glanced up, his eyes wide with astonishment. He choked on thin air when he saw that Felicity was clambering up to join him, William and Diggle on the platform, whipping around to shoot glares at the ‘hallucinations’. She could see them? A lump in his throat, Oliver turned to check William and - he was glowering up at Diggle fiercely, positioned in front of his dad protectively.

Felicity and William could see Diggle, Dinah, Rene and Curtis.

Which meant…

“You can see them too?” Oliver asked, a tremor in his voice.

“Yeah, Oliver,” his wife replied. “They’re really here.”

He wasn’t hallucinating. Oh god, he wasn’t hallucinating.

Which meant that he’d just admitted to all of the ex-members of their team, the people who had abandoned him, assaulted him and blamed him for everything, that he was suffering from mental health issues.

His wife was laying into Diggle, Dinah, Rene and Curtis with an enraged expression, but he could hardly hear what she was saying; it was as if he was deep underwater, the pressure crushing his entire body. His lungs felt as if they were filled with a combination of lead and acid. Breathing was so difficult that he had to wheeze. No amount of oxygen feeling like it was enough, despite his hyperventilating. Oliver’s head was spinning, his thoughts somehow coming too fast and too slow at the same time, making it hard to process anything as everything seemed too overwhelming.

“Felicity,” the archer rasped. “Cloister bells.”

Felicity immediately paused in her yelling, looking at him concernedly. “Cloister bells? What level?”

“Yellow,” he replied with a whimper.

Their therapist had encouraged them to set up a panic word system in case Oliver began to have a panic attack in a public situation and he didn’t feel safe. ‘Cloister bells’ meant that it was serious and an emergency that needed to be treated instantly. The level, either red, yellow or green, indicated the kind of treatment Oliver thought he might need. Yellow meant that Oliver needed Felicity and William with him to help ground him. It also meant that he felt as if he was in danger with anybody else except them, so everybody else in the room needed to be evacuated.

“ _Shit,_ ” Felicity muttered. She shoved past Diggle to kneel in front of him, placing one of her hands over his heart while the other fell onto his shoulder. She no doubt felt his heart beating far too quickly in his chest. “Okay, okay okay okay… Will, go and grab a couple of ice packs from the freezer and your dad’s bow. Oliver, we need to move so you can properly lean back against a wall, alright?”

He struggled to nod but managed to do so, staggering to his feet. William made sure that he was steady before sprinting towards the kitchen area. Oliver noticed that his son made sure to bump Rene’s shoulder harshly while passing him. He very quickly risked a glance towards the others present in the bunker to gauge their reactions. Diggle appeared alarmed, Curtis looked confused, and Rene and Dinah… they had their eyes narrowed suspiciously. Shivering, he let Felicity guide him down the stairs and lead him over to the medical area. She quickly stripped the cot of blankets and sheets for the archer to sit on as he slid down the wall, shaking all over.

“What’s going on?” Curtis asked. “Is Oliver okay? He does _not_ look okay. Felicity?” She didn’t reply to him, focused solely on making sure the archer was comfortable. “Okay, so now _you’re_ ignoring us. John?”

Diggle sounded stricken when he replied, and a tiny flare of hope arose in Oliver at his troubled tone. Maybe Diggle did still care about him. “I don’t know. I’ve - I’ve never seen him like this before. Felicity, what’s wrong with him?”

“You need to leave,” Felicity said to the others, instead of properly answering Diggle’s question. “All of you. You can’t be here right now.”

“You asked us to be here, Blondie,” Rene spits at her.

“Don’t call me that,” Felicity hisses back at him. “And I asked you to come here so we could talk about the issues we have with each other openly, in a safe environment. Right now this is anything _but_ an open and safe environment, which Oliver needs right now, so I’d like you all to leave.” She paused, letting her words sink in before she added in warning, “You will _not_ like what I will do to you if you refuse.”

Oliver doesn’t see their reactions to his wife’s statement due to burying his head in his knees, almost attempting to gulp down oxygen. His vision was fuzzy once again and his head felt like a block of metal weighing on his shoulders. Running his fingers through his hair, Oliver pressed his thumbs into his temples with a soft groan, trying to release the tension there that was triggering the start of a migraine. A blackness was leaching in, causing all of his senses to be amplified. He held a trembling hand out, wanting Felicity. She could always make the darkness go away.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Dinah replied.

“At least not until you explain what’s going on with Oliver,” Curtis added.

“Panic attack,” Felicity reluctantly admitted, settling down in a cross-legged position in front of Oliver so their legs were touching. She laced their fingers together and gripped them tightly, and for a brief moment, the black receded slightly.

“Does he do this often?” Rene questioned with a scoff.

Bristling with barely held back rage, his wife gritted out, “You don’t _do_ a panic attack, Rene, you _have_ one. And they’re _awful_. Oliver has suffered from infrequent panic attacks for over six years now but only recently have they become such a major issue that they’re affecting his day-to-day life.”

“He said - earlier - he has PTSD and depression,” Curtis said. He sounded hesitant. “He thought he was hallucinating us. Has it really been… _that_ bad lately?”

“It’s been _this_ bad, as you put it, ever since you four decided to abandon us,” Felicity responded sharply. “Ever since you decided that Oliver should be blamed for all of your problems and that you should all constantly be rude, abusive and disrespectful to him.”

“Oh, so _we_ should be held accountable for his condition now?” Dinah shouted.

“Considering everything that’s happened? Yes, I think you should take part of the blame.” Felicity fired back. “What are _you_ doing to do, Dinah? Get angry and blame us for having _feelings_ now? Forgive me if I’m not particularly eager to be polite to you, not after how you’ve treated my husband.”

“It was because of him that they left,” Diggle said, sounding hesitant to join the argument. “And you know he was the cause of my leaving the team too.”

“I swear to god, if you start blaming Oliver for everything that’s actually been _your fault_ and a result of _your actions_ , for your own personal issues which you refuse to deal with yourselves, I will destroy all of you digitally.”

He couldn’t deal with this right now. Just people talking was causing his head to feel like it was being pulverized due to how oversensitive he was; if they continued to raise their voices, Oliver thought his brain might actually explode.

“Yellow,” he said, pulling at Felicity’s hand insistently. “Yellow, yellow, yellow.”

She sighed, brushing her hands over his biceps. “I know, honey. But they won’t leave. We’ll just have to treat it like it’s green, okay?”

Once again pushing the others aside roughly, William returned with three flexible ice packs, a bottle of water and Oliver’s compound bow tucked under his armpit. As soon as the archer had his weapon in his hands, which he placed a foot away from him so he could grab it within seconds, he relaxed. He could defend himself if he needed to. Keeping his back to the former members of the team, his son sat down directly next to him, pressing into his side reassuringly.

“You should drink,” William told him, handing over the water bottle. “It might help with the headache. Hydration is important.”

“Thanks,” he whispered, taking a few sips. He winced as Felicity helped position the ice packs, one over each of his forearms and one at the back of his neck. “Cold.”

“You know what they’re for,” she reminded him. “And Will’s right, you should drink a bit more.”

“I think I’ll be sick if I drink anymore.”

Tipping his head back against the wall, the archer placed one hand over his own heart and the other over William’s. He could feel the difference between his thrumming, too-fast pulse and William’s normal, stable heartbeat. He could also feel how quickly he was breathing compared to his son and tried to regulate his inhalations and exhalations to control the flow of oxygen into his body, as he knew it was due to the excessive volume of oxygen he’d taken in because of his hyperventilating that was causing his dizziness and sensation of nearly blacking out.

“You feel nauseous?” Felicity questioned.

“I feel like I wanna throw up,” he muttered.

And while that was mostly because of the strain his body was currently undergoing due to the panic attack…

It was also because Dinah, Rene, Curtis and Diggle were here. Watching him. Observing the archer as he fell to pieces emotionally. He despised feeling vulnerable, especially in front of people he didn’t trust. Here he was having a panic attack, all of his protective mental barriers smashed to rubble, with four people who had somehow begun to persuade Oliver that he was the source of all of the destruction and ruination of the city and their personal lives.

Just thinking about them made him want to shrivel up and vanish. The fact that they were actually _here_ , in the flesh… 

He didn’t realize he was tearing up until Felicity and William began shushing him gently, huddling closer to him to offer comfort. "Everybody leaves,” he croaked. “Everybody betrays me. Everybody _hates_ me. There just - there _must_ be something inherently _wrong_ with me that makes people want to leave.” He anchored himself by clenching his hand in Felicity’s dress, freely crying onto her shoulder. “I… I can’t trust anybody except you and William anymore, Felicity. You two are the only ones who don’t care how broken I am, who still believe in me after everything. Chase was right, he told me - he said I wouldn’t be able to handle another loss and he was _right_. I ended up losing all of my recruits, my battle brother, my sister - god, I even lost _Roy_. Again. I just lost my job which essentially means I lost the whole city. I - I don’t know how much more loss I can take. I won’t survive losing either of you. I can’t watch another person walk out on me. I’d rather kill myself than lose somebody else I care about.”

His quiet sobs and his wife and son’s tender whispers of consolation filled the empty, horrified silence that swept over the bunker like a thick blanket of sadness. Oliver only caught sight of his ex team members expressed for a split second as William moved so he could hug him. Dinah, Curtis and Rene appeared distraught. Their auras of sorrow and dismay now were starkly different to their constant states of irritation, anger and disdain from before. Diggle… he looked heartbroken. The archer could sense the waves of anguish and despair rolling off his battle brother. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Diggle look so upset. He didn’t know exactly what this meant. What he’d said had obviously distressed all of them. He just wasn’t sure how his admittance of his emotions would change things.

His son tightened his arms wrapped around Oliver’s neck, drawing him back to the present. The archer nuzzled into William’s neck as they hugged, the scent of his son’s steely shampoo centering him. “You’re not going to lose us,” William told him firmly. “Felicity and I are always going to be here for you, no matter what, Dad. We _love you_ and we’re _never_ going to leave.”

“He’s right,” Felicity said, smiling sadly. She stroked through his hair soothingly, her other hand rubbing up and down his arm that was nearest to her. “Will and I are going to be here to love and support you for the rest of our lives, baby. We’ll stay with you through anything and everything.”

“Everything just seems so _hopeless_ ,” Oliver whispered. “I… I can’t stop Diaz. He has too much power. He has control over the entire city and… if the trial goes how we think it will, I’ll be in jail by the end of next month.”

“We’ll stop him,” Felicity told him. When he shook his head in disagreement, she took a hand of his hand and looked him directly in the eye. He was startled by the certainty and determination he saw. “We _will_. We’ve taken down criminals far worse than Diaz, Oliver.”

William nodded. “You managed to take down Adrian Chase. He was like - a supervillain. He was a million times worse than Diaz. I am one hundred percent sure that you and Felicity will stop him.” He shot a sideways glare towards the others, specifically towards Diggle. “ _Just_ you and Felicity.”

“Will,” Felicity admonished lightly.

“What?” He tried to look innocent. “I didn’t say anything.”

“John, Rene, Dinah and Curtis are going to help us take down Diaz. Just because they’re not on Team Arrow anymore, doesn’t mean they don’t want to see criminals being punished.”

“Didn’t they form a new team?” William asked.

Felicity looked over at them. Dinah exchanged glances with Rene and Curtis before telling him, “Yes, we did.”

“We’re New Team Arrow,” Curtis added. “NTA for short. Opposed to OTA, Original Team Arrow, that’s Oliver, Felicity and John. Well - _was_ Oliver, Felicity and John. I guess it’s just - Team Olicity now.”

“New Team Arrow?” William repeated, blinking before wrinkling his nose. “You can’t call yourselves that.”

“Why not, pipsqueak?” Rene raised an eyebrow.

“First of all, don’t call me pipsqueak,” William said, glowering at him. “Secondly, you can’t call yourselves New Team Arrow when you don’t have the Arrow on your team. You don’t even have an archer. That’s a stupid name.”

Rene seethed indignantly. “Listen here, kid -”

Except he stopped, because Oliver was laughing. Chuckling quietly under his breath. He still felt anxious and panicky, but his son had brightened the mood. The darkness swamping Oliver had been broken up by tiny sparks of light due to William’s humor. He didn’t realize he’d been so distracted by William speaking that his panic attack had mostly ended, his breathing and heart rate steadying and the tightness in his chest loosening. Seeing his father’s reaction, William lifted his chin a little in pride, grinning smugly. He winked at his dad which just caused Oliver to laugh harder.

“That’s a sound I haven’t heard in a while,” she murmured, her eyes becoming suddenly wet from emotion. She offered a high five to the teenager, who slapped his hand against hers triumphantly. “Nice one, Will!”

“Oliver.” Diggle’s serious tone immediately sobered the archer. He wrapped his arms around himself, leaning into William’s side and locking his gaze with Felicity’s. Her eyes were warm and he instantly calmed internally when she smiled at him. “I think we should talk.”

“I don’t think we should,” he replied.

“No, we… we definitely have a lot to talk about,” Dinah said. “Oliver, we never meant to make you feel… the way you do about yourself, when we left.”

The archer didn’t know what to say. He didn’t _want_ to say anything. Sure, they might say that they didn’t intend to make him feel like utter shit, but they still did. They couldn’t change that. He didn’t even know whether or not Dinah actually meant it. She might only be trying to ‘apologise’ because she felt guilty after witnessing his panic attack. No number of piss poor, half-felt apologies were going to make up for how Dinah, Rene and Curtis treated them after they left the team. Oliver had been nothing but civil towards them and respectful of their decisions since they’d left - and they’d thrown it all back in his face.

“I don’t think Oliver wants to talk to any of you right now,” Felicity informed them delicately. “He’s very emotionally tired after his panic attack… I don’t think it would be a good idea to have a conversation about - well, _everything_ \- at the moment.”

Diggle ignored her. “Look, I’m sorry, man. I crossed a line when I said the things I did in that argument, and especially when I hit you. I know you were trying to get me to back off - I’d recognize your defensive fighting style anywhere - but I kept going for you. None of that should have happened, we should have talked about everything rationally - and maybe I shouldn’t have left the team the way I did.”

For the first time since he’d arrived in the bunker, Oliver did actually attempt to ignore him.

“John, Oliver doesn’t want to talk to you” Felicity repeated. “I’d appreciate it if all of you could go. I’ll contact you tomorrow and arrange another meet-up so we can come up with a plan to tackle taking down Diaz.”

“You can’t honestly think we’d just leave,” Curtis said. “Not after what we’ve just seen and what we’ve just heard Oliver say.”

William got to his feet, striding forwards so he was standing in front of both of his parents. “If you respect my dad and Felicity - if you’ve ever respected them - I think you should leave. My dad wants to be with people he trusts right now.”

“What are you saying, William?” Diggle said, looking sad.

“Exactly what you think I am,” his son shrugged. “My dad and Felicity don’t trust any of you at the moment. I don’t either. You abandoned him and you hurt him. We’d like you to go.” He pointed towards the elevator.

Rene, Curtis and Dinah all looked confounded by William’s assertiveness but listened to him. They trailed towards the elevator with their tails between their legs, aiming apologetic, ashamed glances back at the archer and Felicity, who remained sitting on the floor together.

Diggle didn’t move from his spot. “Oliver…” he said, regret visible on his face.

“Please go,” Oliver managed to say, his voice small.

Turning to Felicity, he tried, “We should really -”

“John,” she cut in. She grimaced at him. “Not today, okay? I’ll call you.”

He nodded. “Okay.” Heading towards the exit as well, he paused for a second to look down at Oliver, offering, “I… hope you feel better soon.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

Diggle stepped into the elevator alongside the other ex team members and it was only once the doors closed and it moved upwards that Oliver finally, completely relaxed, all of the tension leaking out of his shoulders so that he slumped against his wife with an exhausted groan. He hated panic attacks so much. They always resulted in him feeling so tired that he wanted to immediately fall asleep.

“Can’t believe they wouldn’t leave when you asked them to,” William huffed, unhappy as he returned to slide down the wall and rest against Oliver’s other side. “So rude.”

Felicity snorted. “They left when _you_ asked them to,” she pointed out.

“Probably because they didn’t expect a thirteen-year-old to have that much of a spine,” Oliver said, pressing kisses to his wife and son’s foreheads. “Thank you, both of you, for sticking up for me.”

Felicity snuggled up to him, caressing his arm affectionately with her fingertips. “Thank you for trusting us to cover your back.”

“We should go home and watch a movie,” William suggested. “We can eat ice cream!”

“I agree on the going home part,” Oliver tilted his head. “But it’s a little too late for ice cream, buddy.”

“Pshhh, it’s only like - ten pm. And it’s been proven that ice cream helps you relax. ”

“He’s not wrong,” Felicity said.

“You’re meant to take my side,” Oliver told her. “Ice cream at 10pm is not healthy.”

“We’ve had ice cream at later times before,” William reminded him. “We had ice cream while watching the last Harry Potter movie at 2am last week when we all woke up from nightmares and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“Those were unusual circumstances.”

“Aren’t these unusual circumstances too?”

Oliver sighed. He was really too worn out to start arguing with his son. (And he knew that William was going to win this particular argument anyway). “One scoop. And you brush your teeth extra carefully afterward.”

“You’re the best,” William beamed at him.

“I think you and Felicity are the only ones who think so,” he said.

His son scowled as he and Felicity slowly helped Oliver to his feet. “Who cares what _they_ think?”

“William, that’s not very nice to say,” Felicity scolded him.

“I still think it’s stupid they called themselves New Team Arrow when none of them actually use arrows,” William rolled his eyes.

Oliver glanced over at Felicity with a helpless look. “He’s got a point, you know.”

“No ice cream for you, mister.”

“Does that mean I get Dad’s scoop?”

“No, it does not.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! please leave kudos and comment if you enjoyed :)
> 
> tumblr: @alexiablackbriar13  
> twitter: @lexiblackbriar


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